Huckaby: Clock low on the list of worries

Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2007

Darrell

Huckaby

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Well, now we've done it! According to a report out of London - that would be the one in England, not Kentucky - the world Doomsday Clock has been moved forward. It is now five minutes 'til midnight, y'all. The sky is obviously about to fall.

As if I didn't already have enough to worry about.

If you are not familiar with the Doomsday Clock, it was created in 1947, just as the Cold War was beginning to heat up, by a publication called the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists," at the University of Chicago. These were primarily folks who had worked on the development of the atomic bomb and wanted the world to know just how serious the nuclear arms race could be.

Every edition of their journal has a picture of the symbolic clock face on the cover. Every one.

I have to admit, it can be a pretty scary proposition to reach in the mailbox expecting to find the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated and come out with a cover showing the face of a clock counting down the minutes until the end of time.

When the clock was introduced, it was set at seven minutes until midnight. I don't know exactly how long a minute is in relation to the beginning or end of time. I suppose it depends on one's perspective. For instance, if Larry Munson, were counting down to Armageddon, seven minutes would be a long, long time if God's team was ahead and virtually no time at all if God's team was behind.

I'm not sure who was ahead or behind in 1947.

Now, understand, the hands of the clock haven't just sat still the past 60 years. They have been moved forward and backward to coincide with world events. In 1953, for instance, it was only two minutes 'til midnight, according to the scientists who control the clock. That's 120 seconds in Munson-speak. In 1991, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was all the way back to 11:43. I guess folks felt a lot safer back then.

Of course it didn't stay there because the world continued to be a dangerous place to live, and over the past decade-and-a-half the big hand had inched forward until, in 2002, it had reached its original starting point again - 7 minutes 'til annihilation.

And now, at the onset of 2007, the danged thing has been pushed up two more minutes. It's five 'til 12, the furthest advance since 1988. The members of the board, which include physicist Steve Hawking, who is supposed to be one of the smartest men in the world - other than Jimmy Carter, of course, who knows everything - and Arthur C. Clarke, who is a science fiction writer, cite the growing nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran as reasons for moving the clock forward.

But they also have tacked on environmental concerns. They think we are in "the most perilous period since Hiroshima and Nagasaki" because of global warming. In fact, Hawking said that global warming is a lot more serious threat than terrorism or war. The science fiction guy said the same thing.

So there you are. It's almost time to pay taxes, I will soon have to try and keep two kids in college, book sales have dropped off to next to nothing since Christmas and Georgia graduated just about the entire offensive line. Isn't that enough to worry about without the Doomsday Clock being moved forward because of global warming?

To top it all off, I skidded on the ice last week and smashed my fender, and more winter weather is predicted.

Do me a favor, will you? One of you worry about global warming while I call Munson and ask him what time it is.

 Darrell Huckaby is an educator, author and public speaker. Contact him at www.darrellhuckaby.net.